The great challenge of managing amid uncertainty is that the potential outcomes are much more numerous than is typically ex… The approach has you pick 5 different elements of what you think your future life could be like and then tell the story as if it was 5 years from now . It all starts with moving to craft strategy in a new way. South Africa, the author describes how to build scenarios in a step-by-step process and how to use the resulting stories to plan a company’s future. You need to consider the changes that occurred in your department, organization, industry, region, country, and even the world. Vote and rate findings for prioritisation. This process requires investments of people, time, and money. During scenario building, information about different versions of the future, the present and its change drivers are produced, analysed and built into foresight insights. How to build scenarios in preparation for or during humanitarian crises ... based on the existing and possible future capacity to respond to the identified scenarios. It started with one usage scenario: Connect with customers wherever they are. ● Who has an interest in these decisions? In one example I know of a large bank that transformed itself by focusing on it’s personas and scenarios. The original method was that a group of analysts would generate simulation games for policy makers. Analysing them is the key to understanding future developments. Scenario planning will do this by segregation of the knowledge we have into two areas. Once the scenario-descriptions are finalised, you should then implement the results in your organisation’s functions and set up metrics for measuring their future development. Business—and the well-being of people and the planet—will depend on new strategies for the future that account for the profound changes underway and imagine transformative new opportunities to create a more just and sustainable world. 3. By identifying some fundamental trends, a leader can define a series of scenarios that will help you reduce errors in your decision making. 1 How to Build Scenarios Planning for “long fuse, big bang” problems in an era of uncertainty. It makes it fast and easy to build holistic views of future trends on any topic. At this stage, define the main themes, topics, or key ‘what if’ questions you want to explore. What assumptions are necessary? Futures intelligence is future-related knowledge that can inform your decision-making, planning, strategy and innovation processes about the coming changes, challenges and opportunities. The Future Scenarios initiative works in a participatory and interactive way with technical advisors and other key stakeholders in East and West Africa to build some up pictures of different worlds, or narratives, that identify the uncertainties that policy-makers may be faced with at the regional level. Utilising Futures Platform's digital foresight solution and scenario workflows (the uncertainty axis method and intuitive scenario building logic), participants first prioritised phenomena based on their estimated significance and potential future impact. 2005). By following a systematic step-by-step procedure, the scenario team can achieve a balance between wild creativity and free form imagination. An counter-prespective can be found in Ten Rules for Creating Awful Scenarios by Jamais Cascio, which provides a checklist of what NOT to do when creating scenarios.. Scenarios give us a view on what can happen in the future, but it does not provide us with the strategies to deal with them. Since the main benefit of scenario planning is to create a dynamic understanding of potential futures and link them to the decisions we make today, scenario-planning needs to be a continuous, institutionalised practice – ideally conducted at least once a year. “Customer 2030”. Identify the driving forces of the environment that is the key-factor you have listed. These driving forces can originate in the following areas: ● Society and its structure, including demographic, economic and political factors, and public opinions as well. Now the apparent driving forces are suppliers, customers, competitors, employees, shareholders, government and many more. And the first parameter consists of the things that we are sure will happen. Moreover, building scenarios as a one-off exercise will hardly bring any benefits in the long term. Develop stories of the future that diverge from the official future in plausible ways. Over the past few months, we have underta\൫en research to understand these key factors. As a methodology, scenarios take the uncertainty of the future as the starting point. In the very first step you need to decide a time frame. Every e-mail, every action we take on a website or mobile application, and every purchase adds to the collective data-store of the world. Select the two key uncertainties central to the question you’re investigating. Base case scenario – this i… Developing and applying scenarios is part of an ongoing process in Shell that encourages decision-makers to explore the features, uncertainties, and boundaries of the future landscape, and engage with alternative points of view. You can try it yourself for free. A month or two after you implement the scenarios, you need to evaluate your strategic plan and update the policies according to the new market trends. Scenarios assist in identifying and exploring alternative futures. Identification of the following factors about them is also essential. How to Build Scenarios Efficiently with a Scenario Planning Process Scenario planning is a versatile foresight tool that boosts agility and creates space for innovation. Goal: Model future scenarios and understand how to improve through an informed, data-driven approach. These can then be used to build financial models that can be used to estimate the impact on the business of positive or negative events in the future. One frequently used method in scenario planning is the Axes of Uncertainty, which results in 4 scenarios describing alternative futures in a 2x2 scenario planning matrix. For example, we are still unable to find a cure for cancer. Accommodating Alphas’ needs will require an overhaul of several industries ranging from education to work, entertainment and service design. You should foresee similar changes in the next ten years. Because we can’t know what will happen, we need to build out multiple scenarios to get visibility into what could happen.. At this time, the majority of our customers are focused on conserving cash. But due to that success, they started over predicting the future. +358 10 325 7070 With these scenarios, they were able to explore each tourist persona, describe the possible customer profiles, and discover the business opportunities as well as identify risks. For example. In the scenario-building phase, the participants formed four potential tourism landscapes and future tourist personas based on driving forces and uncertainties. Visit Finland began its tourism foresight work in the spring of 2020 by gathering views on trends and signals of change affecting the tourism landscape. Hist… Following a structured scenario planning workflow will guide participants to think about the potential evolvement of trends in a methodological way. Start by articulating the official future — the future that your organization is planning for. In addition to enhancing efficiency, an established scenario planning process will empower organisations to proactively shape the future through strategic decision-making. Imagination also comes into play as managers use scenario analysis to determine or invent possible courses of action to take so the organization can reduce its overall risk and maximize its value. And you can get a sound judgement based on knowledge and experience. While building a scenario, you need to find the strength and weakness of your plan and work accordingly. When performing the analysis, managers and executives at a company will generate different future states of the business, the industry, and the economy. Scenario planning attempts to eliminate the two most common errors made in any strategic analysis - Overprediction and Underprediction of the company's future. Scenarios can be very detailed, all the way to very high level but should at least outline the ‘who’, ‘what’, ‘when’, ‘where’, ‘why’, and ‘how’ of the usage. Are you interested in the complete scenario planning instructions? Ask a selected team involving your organisation and stakeholders to vote for the signals you gathered at the previous stage. The type of segregation used for finding strategies is essential to finding focal issues and degree of uncertainty. It will help keep the process focused yet still open-ended enough, nurturing creative thinking and innovative ideas. This scenario was driven from pain in the business. When the desired future with unique set of Opportunities & Threats is clearer, backcasting can clarify what must be achieved in order to arrive at the end state. Future strategy becomes a lot clearer after the process of investigating and discussing several scenarios. You can adapt faster, and become better prepared to benefit from change. Implement results and measure their future development. Kalevankatu 3, FI-00100 Helsinki, Finland When there are no historical analogies to look back to, scenario planning can help us better understand and plan for a multitude of possible futures. With its key objectives and clear performance indicators, scenario workflows set up clear guidelines for organisations to test, implement and review the results of scenario work in a structured and measurable way. ● What will be the rate of advancement of technology? In scenario planning, the work process itself is as important as the end result, which is why it is crucial for organisations to have a well-defined scenario planning process in place. Future operational environments are increasingly shaped by forces of unprecedented nature, such as new technologies and climate change. This evaluation and update should be done periodically. Easily create your own scenarios with Futures Platform’s scenario planning workflow. These driving forces can originate in the following areas: ● Society and its structure, including demographic, economic and political factors, and public opinions as well. Scenario planning will help us draw a line between over and under predictions. Use them to create a simple 2x2 matrix. Leaders will build a strategy and the staff will later give it a documented form; filling the gap, finding new data, and so forth. You need to build a plot, and then you need to develop your story around it. Select the two key uncertainties central to the question you’re investigating. This matrix contains factors which are beyond the control of planners (external factors). ● Will they incline towards modernization or rationalization? When we build scenarios, we first need to look at the factors that drive education. To empower teams to shape their desirable futures, our foresight experts designed scenario planning instructions for Futures Platform users that can be used repeatedly in strategy, planning and innovation work. External factors are used to develop scenarios. The prioritisation served as the foundation for the scenario work. scenarios demands continual innovation and creativity. try Futures Platform for free for 15-days. The second category includes the things that we think might happen in the future but we are not sure about it. Design your scenario. Separate those forces which are highly predictable and focus on the effects which are not likely to occur. Give each of your scenarios a name and keep the narratives rich with multiple perspectives and actionable insights. With the right tools and support networks, large organisations can easily integrate foresight into their processes. In this course, you’ll build your future forecasting skills. You can utilise Futures Platform’s foresight database with a 15-day free trial to speed up your research. Futures Intelligence article on scenario-making. Most of the organizations make this error while analyzing their strategies. This can include, for example, action plans to seize the identified opportunities or future-proofing operations against the threats you may be facing. It will determine what is going to happen in the future based on the experiences in the past. Implement results and measure their future development Let's say you are developing a decade's scenario; you will look at the past ten years for reference. The correct framing of the issue at hand is vital to the rest of the scenario-making process. Our expectations failed in some places when it came to promotion. Using Strategy to Build Engagement The Value Proposition (VP) approach to strategy meets you where you’re at and builds all that is. Schoemaker is the chair-man of Decision Strategies Interna-tional, Inc., and a professor in the department of operations and infor-mation management, The Wharton FUTURE SCENARIOS: What to Expect from a Nuclear North Korea The unilateral steps announced by North Korea prior to the Singapore Summit were low-cost gestures that made good strategic sense from its perspective. I hope this book will inspire and encourage you and your organisation to build scenarios and embark on your own exploration of the future. ● What will be the views of customers about your product? Scenarios are typically used to provide a picture of the intended user experience (i.e. Back in April 2015 I came across a tool about writing 5 Future Scenarios. There’s a difference here between making big decisions (to phase out fossil fuels or eliminate poverty, for example) and responding to defining moments and crunches (such as dealing with financial crises, conflicts, pandemics or disasters). ● Your organisational capacities and core competencies. Think of scenarios as possible futures for your company. Or we can take the help of external resources which others have developed. info@futuresplatform.com. With a scenario planning process, teams can easily make scenario planning an integral part of their strategy work. As a result of the scenario work, Visit Finland is now well-equipped to take advantage of future changes and seize innovative opportunities to serve future travellers' needs. Among the many tools a manager can use for strategic analysis, scenario planning can capture a wide range of possibilities with specific detailing. If you don't have a subscription yet, check our subscription plans and pricing here or try Futures Platform for free for 15-days. Having its roots in cinema, scenario building also uses compelling narratives that make foresight work accessible and engaging for all participants. We know that development in the field of technology is going on at a constant rate. Imagine how hard it was 50 or 100 years ago even to imagine the advancement in technology we have now. Like political voting, price hike etc. Scenarios are built up by using a matrix. It makes sense to have external help with the process, such as customers, dealers, suppliers, politicians, publicists, journalists etc. Scenario analysis is a method for creating responses to various future events with the aim of reducing uncertainty and maximizing the chances of achieving a desired outcome. With a fine balance between objective knowledge and intuitive logic, they form well-founded but still imaginative descriptions of possible futures. Fill in the following information and we will contact you for a brief introduction to the Futures Platform foresight tool. Variable cells (called changing cells) can be adjusted before saving the scenario for future use. Etc. As a result a vision for desired future will start to emerge. You need to define touchpoints around which your story will revolve. She is an avid reader, an experienced writer and a passionate researcher who loves to write about all kinds of topics. ● What will be the approach of government? 2. What must be true for this future to be realised? Read more about scenarios in our Futures Intelligence article on scenario-making. Using the Scenarios to Build Strategic Resilience. what ideally should happen), but … The overall purpose is to build strategic thinking that encourages variety and provides us with a sharper approach about the available opportunities. https://app.creately.com/diagram/6i3b5QMAi1Z/edit. STAT asked a number of experts to map out scenarios of how we might come to coexist with this new threat. A team tries to think of everything that could potentially affect the issue. With the accelerating complexity of change, there is a growing need to supplement pure forecasting methods, which rely on objective historical data, with qualitative and speculative foresight practices that focus on ‘what if’ questions. Therefore, scenario analysis gives you a more explicit picture of the future. Once it is created, start adding new categories, according to your hypothesis. Future Scenarios. A step-by-step Guide to Scenario Planning. Even if the rate of change in our life is accelerated to a great extent, the future might not hold what we expect. The market situations are regularly changing according to the macro-environmental factors we defined above. To further narrow down your scope, also determine the year when your scenarios will be taking place, e.g. Digital transformation will bring comprehensive changes for companies. Free of charge. During scenario building the range of plausible developments, their predicted impact on the people affected, and But still, there are some limitations to what technology can do. Here we are going to take a look at how we can conduct scenario planning step-by-step and benefit your company in the coming years. ● Markets and Customer Behaviour ● Technology and Inno… Scenario planning is a versatile foresight tool that boosts agility and creates space for innovation. Scenarios are a flexible tool that can be used to stress test and future-proof nearly any sort of strategy or plan. Example of three different revenue forecast scenarios Why create scenarios? Scenario building was executed by involving Visit Finland’s network of experts. We recommend using Futures Platform's foresight solution as a complete tool for the scenario workflow. A Story of Using Personas to Create the Future of Digital Banking. Factors that are within the control of planners (internal factors) can be applied to develop strategies (MORIARTY et al. But when the environment is highly uncertain, it is difficult to have clarity on the path forward. The people who predicted this were scientists and entrepreneurs who were successful in their fields. How to Build Scenarios Efficiently with a Scenario Planning Process. About the Author: Amanda Athuraliya is the communication specialist/content writer at Cinergix, the team behind the development of Creately. But with strong forecasting skills, YOU can avoid future shock. 4. They are best deployed in a workshop setting with a diverse set of internal stakeholders. Written by Professional Academy Guest Blogger Amanda Athuraliya. Use them to create a simple 2x2 matrix. We offer both electronic and printed copies of learning material and the chance to undertake a professional qualification within a time-frame that suits you. Contact us to learn more about how you can make scenario-work efficient, engaging and impactful using this easy-to-follow workflow. In addition to megatrends, search also for wild cards, weak signals of change and weakening trends to ensure diversity in your environmental description. While you are setting the time frame, you should consider various factors: Once you have an appropriate time frame decided, determine what knowledge would hold substantial value for your organization for an extended period. The objective of this process is to determine fundamental patterns and uncertainties. For many people, the future comes as a surprise – or even a shock. No matter the industry, organisations that systematically explore alternative futures will be the ones who seize disruptive innovation opportunities and lead the change. Megatrends, trends and change drivers are the staple of any foresight work. tive and putting something on the table, albeit something well short of denuclear-ization, Kim set up North Korea to begin So, you need the assessment and update accordingly at a certain specified period. All articles in this blog refer to futures knowledge within the Futures Platform online foresight tool. Eliminate the two most common errors made in any strategic analysis - Overprediction and Underprediction of issue. For all participants shape the future as the foundation for the scenario for future use year. A systematic step-by-step procedure, the team behind the development of Creately that could potentially affect the issue at is! 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